Small Wars Journal

Three Reasons the West is Failing to Halt Islamic State

Tue, 08/18/2015 - 8:50am

Three Reasons the West is Failing to Halt Islamic State by David Murphy, Irish Times

Despite the fact the so-called Islamic State has resulted in a new wave of global radicalisation and has also precipitated population displacement on a scale unseen since the second World War, the West has proved unable to develop a coherent strategy to counter this threat. Recent months have shown that IS poses an existential threat to all countries and peoples in the Middle East and that it also has the ability to “inspire” terror attacks in the West. This week, Sinai Province, a IS affiliate operating in Egypt, posted photographs purporting to show the remains of Croatian hostage Tomislav Salopek, whom they had executed. This is the first killing of a European by an IS-related group in Egypt and it demonstrates the capacity of the IS movement to promote such actions outside its hinterland in Syria and Iraq. A massive truck bomb in Baghdad’s Sadr City yesterday was also claimed by IS. However, the western response to IS has remained unfocused.

Indeed, there is considerable international debate about actually referring to this phenomenon as “Islamic State”, due the validity implied in that term. The different nations ranged against it refer to IS by different names (Isis, Isil, Daesh etc) and this is suggestive of a wider lack of consensus regarding how to counter this threat. As veteran strategist Edward Luttwak commented recently , “You cannot defeat an enemy if you are afraid to name it.” …

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